According to economists, severe legal sanctions deter violations of the law. According to legal scholars, people may obey law backed by mild sancions because of norm-activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild and severe legal sanctions in the provision of public goods. The...

We test if cooperation is promoted by rank-order competition between groups in which all groups can be ranked first, i.e., when everyone can be a winner. This type of rank-order competition has the advantage that it can eliminate the negative externality a group's performance imposes on other...

In this paper, we study the effectiveness of intergroup competition in promoting cooperative behavior. We focus on intergroup competition that is non-rival in the sense that everyone can be a winner. This type of competition does not give groups an incentive to outcompete others. However, in...